


The Perfect Venue

by acaciapines



Category: Splatoon
Genre: F/F, a proposal fic, au where pearl and marina are both a few years older, i cant believe they're in love, soft content, these lesbian squids deserve the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-18 00:54:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19966039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaciapines/pseuds/acaciapines
Summary: When Pearl learns that she won the Final Splatfest, she realizes that this is the perfect venue to put forth hernefarious plans....





	The Perfect Venue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [octorose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/octorose/gifts).



It’s popular myth that the two of them get the Splatfest results ahead of time. They actually don’t—something about it being more dramatic, blah blah, Pearl tends to stop paying attention to directors and producers and the people with the cameras and whoever else technically manages their show. Marina can deal with that stuff. Or, not deal, but listen.

Pearl herself isn’t actually sure if anybody knows that she’s like, majorly in love with Marina? Well. Marina does, duh, would be a depressing relationship and also very hard to date someone if they didn’t know. But thing is, all the stuff about dramatics—sometimes she has to squint at film dudes and wonder _do they really think I’m so catty that I’d like, for real hate Marina?_

It’s weird. It’s why when, the screen behind them lights up with the Splatfest results and it turns out Pearl fucking WON, something she wasn’t expecting but is so here for, she jumps up in her seat, pumping a fist in the air. There’s been plans tickling at the back of her head, for a while now, and this is the perfect venue to set them forth in! They’ve been meaning to go public with their relationship, anyways. Pearl’s done with people commenting ‘aww, you guys are such good friends!’

They are. But they’re way, way more than friends, is the thing!

“Chaos reigns!” Pearl cheers, sticking her tongue out at Marina across from her. Three to none, baby! Pearl’s on fucking fire!

“Nooo!” Marina says, long and over-dramatic—Pearl can see the tiny smile Marina flashes her. “Inkopolis is doomed!”

“Muahaha!” Pearl laughs, thumping back into her seat, letting it spin around a few times before catching herself, luckily not falling on the floor. Marina _laughed_ at her, when, back before they were very famous, Pearl spent a full two days teaching herself how to spin wildly in a chair and not fall off. But all that work paid off, didn’t it!

Huh. Was that all really two years ago? Longer? Pearl doesn’t know. Who the fuck cares about time! Not her!

“Now,” Pearl says, because her little thought session lasted about half a second real-time and she’s got a victory to gloat about, and also, a plan to start. Even though she’s realizing just this second that oh, she didn’t think she’d win, her original plan involved a tall building, a helicopter, and at least two megaphones. Eh. She’ll ad-lib it. She knows the basics. “It’s time for everything to change, and it starts with Off the Hook!”

Marina freezes, for half a second, her eyes blinking wide. Oh, she’s got no idea what’s about to hit her!

Or does she? They’ve floated the idea before, made sure they were both chill with it being a public thing. But Pearl’s sneaky! She’s sure Marina doesn’t know it’s happening today.

“Marina,” Pearl starts, “these last few years have been amazing, easily the best of my life. But I can’t shake the feeling that we’re missing out on other experiences.”

“Pearl,” Mariana says, scared, cautious. Is she…she’s okay with this, right? “You don’t have to do this.”

Hmm. Maybe she hasn’t gotta the full picture, because Pearl’s still got a whole speech to go through. “Lemme finish, Marina. I’ve been thinking about this the entire Splatfest, it was actually supposed to happen after, but I won, which, hell yeah! Wasn’t ‘specting that, thanks all of you Chaos fans out there. But I’ve made up my mind! It’s time for Off the Hook to break—”

“No! Don’t say it!” Marina interrupts, but Pearl’s still going on with her words even as her brain nearly explodes in her head, because Marina is _terrified_ and Pearl doesn’t know why but her girlfriend is tearing up and that’s a bad, bad thing. But it’s too late for her to do anything but continue on.

“—into new genres of music! Flip Hop, Cuddlecore, pots-and-pans, you name it! We gonna take over the world!”

It’s an old joke of theirs—new genres, one of them has to be stupid. Her favorite has to be Marina’s ‘bee sounds over ASMR turned up to its highest volume, with you in the background loudly drinking a near-empty glass of water, and me trying to squeeze out the last bit of ketchup from the bottle.’ Sadly, nobody else gets it, so she has to keep it simple. Just a bit of fun before she gets to the big, big stuff.

“Wait!” Marina yells, and she’s not over-joyed, but not sad either, more surprised. “Off the Hook isn’t breaking up?”

“What?!?” Pearl asks, because no, never! Off the Hook breaking up means them breaking up, and that’s the opposite of what Pearl is trying to do here! “Hell no! You and me are gonna rock the mic together until the end of time!” She offers Marina a cheeky smile. “Or at least until I can get my solo career off the ground.”

Marina gives her an unamused stare, but there’s hints of relief and laughter in it. Pearl loves her a lot, is the thing. She knows she’s kinda insufferable. It’s good to know Marina loves her, weird traits and all.

Pearl laughs, spinning once in her chair, because this is a chair-spinning matter. “I’m just playing, Marina, you know I love you!”

And here come the big guns. Pearl’s never nervous, really, it’s a lot easier to just jump into doing something and deal with whatever the consequences are later. She’s maybe a little nervous here, though. This is a big, big thing, and she’s pretty confident she knows the answer already, hell, Marina might know what’s coming by now! She’s never actually said the words ‘I love you’ on TV before—not like they’re secretive, but they’re not the most open in public because Marina’s a bit shy about that stuff and doesn’t want the attention. She’s okay with it for this, though. She’s tired of all the friend comments, too.

“Every day I’ve know you has been the best just ‘cause you were there,” Pearl says, continuing from where she left off. Them becoming girlfriends took a solid five months because they were both to careful with things. Didn’t wanna fuck up. This…Pearl knows what she has with Marina is solid. “And I’ve said it thousands of times before, but yeah, I love you. Chaos is all about shaking things up, doing something new, breaking old patterns. So. Wanna take a big leap of change and get married?” Pearl finishes things with a sharp-toothed grin, because she knows who she is.

Marina is quiet for a second, before her face splits into a grin that mirror’s Pearl’s own. “Pearl, I…yes! Yes, obviously, I…” she tears up, happy tears, Pearl can assume. “I’m so happy right now…!”

Marina leaps up, and Pearl, having an idea of where this is going, does the same, and they meet in the middle, where Pearl learns that huh, kissing on live TV isn’t actually different from kissing back in their apartment. Shit, does Pearl love Marina! She can’t believe she actually did that!

“It’s you and me against the world, ‘Rina,” Pearl says, grinning when they break apart. She reaches up to wipe some tears still stuck in Marina’s eyes, and Marina just giggles, hugs Pearl close.

It’s about then that Pearl’s brain catches up with her and she realizes oh, shit, they just kissed on live TV! And she proposed? HER AND MARINA ARE GONNA BE WIVES????? Everyone in Inkopolis Square has to be watching, she can only—wait.

She turns as best she can, still staying in Marina’s arms because there’s no chance she’s leaving, to look out the window behind them, where. Damn, there really are a lot of Inklings watching this, huh? She laughs, pokes at Marina to show her the crowd: the wild, excited crowd. Pearl watches someone in the middle of the crowd, where she with her vantage point can see the best, rip off their shirt and throw it up into the air all while jumping up-and-down, obviously fucking pumped for what just happened.

Pearl laughs, gleeful, turning back to the camera—but first tugging Marian down for another kiss, because they’re public now, they can just do that whenever! “You’re all invited to the wedding!” she calls, grabbing Marina’s hand and proudly holding them up.

“Possibly!” Marina adds, still grinning. “We have nothing planned!”

“Since I won the Splatfest, can we have a chaos-themed wedding?” Pearl asks, practically bouncing on her feet with her excitement.

“You know what, yeah, sure,” Marina says, giggling, “I’d actually really like to see what you manage to put together.”

“It’s gonna be fucking awesome, that’s for sure!” Pearl says. The crowd’s still going crazy behind them, and Pearl’s honestly forgotten what the fuck else they were actually supposed to be saying on this show—she did her part! And it was the best part possible!

“Wanna bounce?” Pearl asks Marina.

“With you? Always,” Marina says.

They’ve made it two steps out the door to their studio, still in the hallway of the building they film in, when Pearl realizes that actually, when she said bounce she just meant away from the camera, and she proceeds to kiss Marina silly.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a birthday gift to my friend ash! she's very amazing and i lot her lots! i don't play splatoon, but she does, and because of that i have a lot of secondhand splatoon knowledge, like the fact that pearl and marina are very much in love, and i was really hoping they'd get canonically married in the final splatfest...and u know what? we got pearl saying 'i love you' and that's way more than i actually expected. i hope you like this, ash! and im sorry eight and three aren't here. you can imagine that the person who threw their shirt in the air is whichever one of them would make more sense to like, do that. 
> 
> you can see my lack of knowledge about pearl and marina does in fact shine through. idk if they have a canonical backstory. and while editing i realized i forgot to make pearl like, give marina a ring, but this is a fantasy world about squids and octopuses so maybe they don't do that. or pearl just forgot about the ring part. or left it at home. it was for sure she left it at home and just didn't remember until the very end bc she was too excited about other things. 
> 
> also: i know marina is an octoling but splatoon will always be 'the squid game' to me so they are forever the squid lesbians.


End file.
